Migration and Sex Work through a Gender Perspective

Abstract

The trajectories of migration and prostitution are embedded in representations of body, gender, sex and sexuality. This article seeks to understand the articulation between migration and sex work through the lens of gender. To this end, this article relies on a typological approach that aims to clear some ground in the ongoing debate on the issues of prostitution, sex trafficking and migration of sex workers. It explores the theoretical cross-contribution as well as the conceptual limitations of radical, liberal, post-colonial, critical and postmodern feminist perspectives on the issues of prostitution, sex workers’ mobility and sex trafficking. It gives special focus to the contributions of the postmodern feminist reading, especially by highlighting how it has challenged conventional feminist theories, hitherto grounded in dualistic structures. In fact, the postmodern feminist approach makes a stand against the simplistic dichotomies such as First/Third World, passivity/agency, vulnerability/empowerment, innocence/conscience, sexual trafficking/voluntary prostitution or ‘trafficked victim’/‘autonomous sex worker.’ As such, postmodern feminism disrupts all fixed demarcations and homogeneous forms of categorisation on which the dominant feminist theories were based, allowing thus for the emergence of new practices of subjectivity as well as new forms of flexible identities.

Male Sex Workers Selling Physical Sex during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Portugal: Motives, Safer Sex Practices, and Social Vulnerabilities

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Transforming human trafficking rescue services in Nigeria: towards context-specific intersectionality and trauma-informed perspectives

“…Further, "intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects" (Crenshaw, 2019, p. X). Human trafficking is a context in which the intersectionality of class, gender and culture is at the fore, though these dynamics are often downplayed (Valadier, 2018;Ibezim-Ohaeri, 2018). For example, the dominant binary discourse on human trafficking, particularly in/for sex work, constructs trafficked individuals either as rational economic actors, in which case sex work is considered legitimate (O'Brien et al, 2013), or as commodified helpless victims according to the abolitionist feminist perspective (Jeffries, 1997;Mackay, 2014).…”

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“…Dva su dominantna i po svemu oprečna feministička shvaćanja prostitucije: prvo, radikalno feminističko, koje prostituciju smatra nasiljem nad ženama (Barry, 1996;Jeffreys, 2008) i seksualnim iskorištavanjem u uvjetima patrijarhata, i drugo, liberalno, koje prostituciju smatra radom, a pojedine aktere prostitucije racionalnim i aktivnim osobama koje se ponašaju u skladu s osobnim izborima na autonoman način (Valadier, 2018). Osim tog dihotomnog shvaćanja prostitucije postoji i treći feministički pristup (pretežno iz postmoderne perspektive) utemeljen na empirijskim istraživanjima, koji prepoznaje pravo osoba koje prodaju seksualne usluge na samoodređenje, kao i društvene, ekonomske i političke prepreke slobodi, ne ulazeći u vrijednosno određenje prostitucije kao inherentno opresivne ili kao primjer seksualnih sloboda (Radačić i Pajnik, 2017;Della Giusta i Munro, 2016;Scoular, 2010;Sanders, 2006;O'Neil, 2001;O'Connell Davidson, 1998).…”